Trouble booting with a hard drive disconnected

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I am about to reinstall Windows 7 and figured I would enable AHCI while I am at it.

I have 2 identical hard drives, not in raid, and to be on the safe side, I was going to unplug the storage drive just so I don't mess up and choose the wrong drive.

I unplugged the storage drive and when I reboot to make sure I had disconnected the right one, I get the disk boot failure message. Ok, I thought I unhooked the wrong drive. So I unhook the other drive and I get a message saying Windows has detected some hardware changes, drive not accessible or something like that.

How come Windows will not start up with the secondary drive unhooked? Am I going to have to reinstall Windows with both drives hooked up? The reason I wanted to unhook the storage drive is because I am enabling AHCI before I reinstall Windows and I just didn't want to take the chance of something happening to that drive. Although I have heard that enabling AHCI should not cause any loss of data.

When I first installed Windows, I had both drives hooked up. Someone said that since both drives were hooked up that the boot loader was installed on the second drive or something like that. I would like to avoid this in the future. Is there a simple way to get Windows to boot with just the one drive hooked up?

Another thing I noticed is under disk management, it shows both drives as the primary partition. Shouldn't the drive with Windows installed be the only primary partition?

If I knew which drive was which, I would go ahead and try a repair first. I am almost positive that I know which one has Windows on it but I don't want to take a chance and it be the wrong drive.
 
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When you change sata mode you have to install the ahci driver before windows can see the drive. You will have to reinstall windows now that you have enabled ahci.
 
I have not enabled AHCI yet. I was figuring on enabling AHCI, then reinstalling Windows but with the second drive unhooked, it will not boot.

I have not tried to reinstall Windows or enable AHCI yet. Right now I am just trying to get it to boot with the second drive unhooked.
 
Why would Windows do that?

I would do that but I am not 100% positive I know which drive has Windows installed. I was wanting to leave the second drive disconnected. What is to keep Windows from putting the boot files back onto the second drive doing a repair install?
 
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slave the drive to another machine and search it to find out which one is which. Whenever you install windows, its always a good idea to disconnect other drives strictly for this reason alone.
 
Can you figure it out this way? When I disconnect the top drive, I get the disk boot failure, please insert system disk and press enter message.

When I disconnect the bottom drive, I get the Windows Boot manager screen that says Windows has failed to start, a recent software or hardware change might be the cause. Please insert the Windows disk and do a repair install.

Going by that can you tell what drive has Windows installed?
 
That what I was thinking as well but it turned out to be the top drive that has Windows installed.

So should I be able to leave the bottom drive disconnected and do a repair install and then I should be able to boot with just the Windows drive hooked up?

From now on whenever I install Windows, I will disconnect the other drives. I didn't realize that would be a problem. Why does Windows do that?

BTW, thanks for your help, Johnb35.

One mistake I made is that we have 2 computers in the house, mine and dads. Both of them have the exact same hard drives, 2 in each. That can get pretty confusing when I start switching them.
 
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Well, that is part of the reason I call them "Moronsh_t" makers of "Windopes". What you have to do to allow disconrection of a drive and still have "Windopes" boot, is go into device manager and click your HDDs, and set the one you want to be able to disconnect as "Removable". That should solve your problem.
 
I do not see anything under disk management that allows me to choose "removable."

Could you tell me exactly how to do that?

I may have figured this out. Under disk management, under the C drive, which is the Windows drive, it says "boot, page file, crash dump and primary partition."

Now for the E drive, which is the storage drive, it says "system, active, primary partition." I am assuming this is why it will not boot with this drive disconnected.

To fix that, do I just click make the partition active on the C drive? Will that affect any data on the storage drive?
 
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K, First of all I build my own machines, and I use "HotSwap Trays" to enable me to move Backups, Mass Data, and whatever else I need to move around between my machines. All my machines except "SUPERPUPPY 1" have "HotSwap Trays", so the drives have to be "Removable".

See :

1) SCX : my currant ATX machine, (am building a new one),

scx01.jpg


The two items with the lit windows at the top of the machine are "HotSwap Trays" Blue window = SATA, Green window = IDE. The Vantec Trays I use, also have temperature monitoring for the drives in them.

scx03.jpg


SCX is an XP Triple boot machine, with two boots residing on the machine at all times; and a third boot available in a "HotSwap Tray" to replace the main boot if necessary.

2) SUPERPUPPY 2 on the other hand is an old AT machine running WIN98-SE. It also has a Vantec "HotSwap Tray".

sp2htsw.jpg


3) In addition to those and the new one I am building, I also Have SUPERPUPPY 1, an NT4 dualboot machine, (No "HotSwap Tray" in that one); and SUPERPUPPY 3, which is an XP PRO -- WIN98 SE dualboot machine with another Vantec "HotSwap Tray"; but that machine is down for the time being.

4) I also have a bunch of spare HDDs in Vantec "HotSwap Trays", for storing backups, and data.

hotswaptrays2.jpg


Now about Moronpoop Windopes. Curiously enough WIN98-SE allows you to set a drive as removable, and run the machine with or without it installed. Also CURIOUSLY XP PRO recognizes this setting, and once a drive has been set as "Removable" by WIN98-SE, XP PRO will also run with or without that HDD installed.

NOTE : The following pictures are ""Full Screen" and if downloaded, you can read them clearly.

To set a drive as "Removable" under WIN98-SE :

1) Click the Start Menu, and on the Start Menu click Settings, then from the "Settings Menu" Click "Control Panel".

corel1.png


2) That will open the "Control Panel" window, from which you select "System"

corel2.png


3) Clicking "System" will open a "System Properties" window in which you click "Device Manager".

corel3.png


4) Clicking on "Device Manager" brings up a list of the Hardware on the machine, from which you click on "Disk Drives".

corel4.png


5) Clicking on "Disk Drives" will bring up a list of the HDDs installed on the machine.

corel5.png


6) From that list, select the HDD that you want to make removable by clicking on it, that will open a "Properties" window for that HDD; and in that window, you click on "Settings".

corel6.png


7) That will finally open the "Settings" for that HDD, and one of those "Settings" is to make it a "Removable" drive.

corel7.png


Curiously enough there are things you can do with Corel Photopaint with WIN98-SE that you can't do with XP-PRO also. Makes a couple of good reasons to run a 98-SE -- XP-PRO dualboot.
 
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Other thing being, I believe your "C" drive must be set "Active" in order to boot. Why your "E" drive is active is beyond me.
 
I got everything sorted out. I made the c drive the active drive through disk management. That still didn't solve the problem so I did a startup repair with the Windows disk. Now I can boot into Windows with the other drives disconnected.

As to why it did this, I am not sure. But I think it had something to do with having both drives connected when I first installed Windows. For whatever reason, it put some of the boot files on the second drive.
 
You may be right about that, I know I have had the same problem, but I fixed it by making my drives removable. Been a while now, don't recall what else I may have done.
 
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